to save the olympic games, china puts on a happy face

Olympics water diversion threatens millions… By Jamil Anderlini in Xi'an … Published: February 26 2008 22:17 Last updated: February 26 2008 22:17… London Financial Times … (excerpted) … The diversion of water to Beijing for the Olympics and for big hydropower projects threatens the lives of millions of peasant farmers in China’s north-western provinces, according to a senior Chinese government official. …In an interview with the Financial Times, An Qiyuan, a member and former chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Committee for Shaanxi province and former Communist party chief of Shaanxi, warned of an impending social and environmental disaster because of overuse of scarce water resources. … In a critical tone seldom heard from Chinese officials, Mr An called on Beijing to provide compensation to the provinces that have been told to pump their cleanest water to the capital in order to ensure potable supplies during the Olympics. … Beijing will need an estimated 300m cubic metres of additional water just to flush out the polluted and stagnant rivers, canals and lakes in its central areas to put on a clean, environmentally-friendly face for Olympic visitors, according to municipal officials. … “In order to preserve the quality of Beijing’s water we have to close all our factories. But we still need to live. So I say the government needs to compensate Shaanxi,” Mr An said. “If you don’t compensate the masses then how can they survive?”

To save the “games” China puts on a happy face and “we” buy it, because that’s exactly what we do…?

That possibly several million “little-nameless-faceless-peasants” will have their lives threatened is of no concern of ours. The games must go on “for-profit-corporate-interests” have declared and obediently we oblige…

We see only the mask because that’s what we’ve been trained and educated to see and to obediently respond to…

Reality for us, is the mask…